Dream Bike Thoughts

1 – Racer Rosa Spirit – Straight in at No. 1 for March and following some research around the Bespoked.cc cycle show coming up in March. This London-based company, Racer Rosa, make beautiful bikes.

2 – Condor Acciaio or Super Acciaio – much discussion to be had over the group set, which must be Campagnolo, but is Chorus or Athena. And what about the wheels!!

3 – Ridley X-Fire – one of the few carbon bikes with a design that’s really jumping out at the moment.

4 – Enigma Evoke or Esprit – Dropping out of the Top Three, is titanium just too sensible?

With a following wind, 2014 will be the year that a number of us get the chance to upgrade to that dream bike. For me, I suspect that that will be my last major bike choice while staying with race bikes… I suspect that in ten years time my racing days may be behind me, but that’s another story.

It’s worth noting that I’m thinking of a dream bike as a road bike, as they have a level of heritage and aesthetic that mountain bikes just don’t have at the moment. Don’t get me wrong, I love my mountain bike and there are some fantastic choices in the world of MTB exotica which will almost certainly tax my bike-buying brain cells in years to come. But for now in 2014 “Dream bike” equals “Road bike”.

So to set the scene, my cyrrent bike is a perfectly serviceable aluminium Cannondale R700. It still does much of what’s asked of it and is still a beautiful bike amongst the current pelotons of carbon wonders, but it’s getting a bit long in the tooth (with most of the components getting to end of life) and, after seven years of learning how to ride a road bike, I could probably handle something racier. Note – that I chose an aluminium frame after a decade (and the rest) of lusting the oversized tubes from Klein and Cannondale, but I’m put this particular frame material to one side for the dream bike, so the dream bike will fall into one of these options:

1 – Carbon – there’s a small part of my brain (probably same part that thinks that a Ferrari might be a good idea) that says that getting a carbon bike would be a good idea, if only because it’ll need replacing in ten years time, so I can justify another dream bike in 2024.

2 – Titanium – close to perfect in terms of a material for building the ‘lifetime’ bike.

3 – Steel – a material that had been destined for the scrapheap, but is now rising in usage again now that the components are lighter and the material’s capabilities being explored more.